Milva, real name Maria Ilva Biolcati (born July 17, 1939) is an Italian singer, actress and TV personality. She is also known as 'The Red' (due to the colour of her hair) or as the 'Panther of Goro', which stems from the Italian press nicknaming three Italian female singers of the 1960s by animals and the singers' birth places. The other two were Mina 'The Tiger of Cremona' and Iva Zanicchi 'The Eagle of Ligonchio'.

BiographyShe was born in Goro, province of Ferrara.

In 1959 Milva won a contest for new voices, and was named the overall winner from more than seven thousand participants. In 1960 she recorded her first 7" single with Cetra Records: Édith Piaf's song "Milord". Her real debut was on the stage of the Sanremo Music Festival in 1961, where she took third place. She competed many times at the Festival (14 times in total, the last time in 1993). The highest position she has reached is second place in 1962, but she has never won to date.

In 1965, a fortunate meeting led to a definitive change in her career: Italian director Giorgio Strehler helped to develop her skills in staging and singing in Italian theatres (especially the Piccolo Teatro in Milan) and she began to perform a more committed repertoire (songs of the Italian resistance movement, songs from Bertolt Brecht's pieces, etc.). In the following years she starred in Giorgio Strehler's production of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera which was performed in several cities of Western Europe. Milva's albums were certificated gold and platinum records in West Germany. In 2006 she was awarded with the First Class of the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

In 1962 Milva was the first singer to sing Édith Piaf's repertoire at the prestigious Olympia theatre in Paris. In 1983 she performed the repertoire at the venue again and again received an ovation from the audience and the French press, very surprised how a non-French artist could interpret with such a feeling and energy the songs of Piaf.

She was a highly eclectic artist, performing both pop music, opera (in duet with Luciano Berio), comedy, drama, TV shows (Al Paradise in 1983 won the Rose d'Or of the Montreux Film Festival) and musicals. She also occasionally appeared in some Italian movies of the 1960s, like La bellezza di Ippolita with Gina Lollobrigida. From 1973 to 1980, Milva is on tour (Italy, USA, Greece, France, Germany, Canada, Russia and Japan) with the band "I Milvi" composed by Neno Vinciguerra on piano, Franco Paganelli on guitar, Claudio Barontini on bass, Giovanni Martelli on drums and Marco Gasperetti on flute. The entire band becomes Livorno "Black and Withe" when in concert joins the gospels of the New Folkstudio Singer composed Lois Cantor, Hazel Rogers Nat Bush, Eddie and Jesse Hawkins.

Her singing career has become more complex and various year by year, thanks to the collaboration with the European composers and musicians including Ennio Morricone in 1965, Francis Lai in 1973, Mikis Theodorakis in 1978 (Was ich denke became a best selling album in Germany), Enzo Jannacci in 1980, Vangelis in 1981 and 1986, Franco Battiato in 1982 and 1986.

Milva in 2009Her stage productions of Bertolt Brecht's recitals and Luciano Berio's operas have toured the world's theatres. She has performed at La Scala in Milan, at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, at the Paris Opera, in the Royal Albert Hall in London, at the 1984 Summer Olympics, at the Edinburgh Festival, and others.

In 1984 she performed (with Ástor Piazzolla) the show El tango in the Les Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. This was the beginning of a collaboration, interpreting the nuevo tango.

In 1997 her mentor Giorgio Strehler died. She temporarily reduced her theatre activities and focused on music only. She received new inspiration collaborating with Thanos Mikroutsikos, James Last and Shinji Tanimura. Then she performed her fourteenth tour in Japan.

Her 2004 CD and tour was dedicated to the Milanese poetess Alda Merini to whose poetry the music was set.

She has a daughter named Martina born in the marriage with Maurizio Corgnati in the early 1960s.